A Family Divided. (Diagonally)

Okay, we aren't actually divided but for the next few months we are apart. Mark on Whidbey Island, the kids and I in Orlando, Fl, so we have a country between us (diagonally).

This is trip made possible by homeschooling and by my grandparents renting a townhouse in a resort community in Orlando for ten weeks. What better then to spend time with the extended family and get out of soggy Washington for a bit? Unfortunely Mark is not able to get that much time off so he is staying home but will join us in March for a few weeks.

So, a few days before we flew out all three infinks came down with upper respiratory infections, eye infection, ear infections, hacking up lungs...the general germy kiddo stuff. So we bundled them all off to urgent care for Meds, the thought of seven hours of flight with all those stuffed up noses and ears was not appealing.

Arm wrestling at the hospital.

Thankfully after a few days the kids started to feel better, fevers gone but just coughs and runny noses hanging on, but as was entirely inevitable, the morning we fly out I wake up sick as a dog.

My mom and the kids in the airport.

Goofy on the first plane.

Five hour flight with three small kids... What is wrong with this picture? 

No TV !!!! 

Thanks goodness for nintendos.

15 hours of travel and one hurried dash through the airport for an unexpected gate change with three backpacks hanging off me and Finn on my shoulders, we arrived in Orlando, sick and tired. We managed to get a taxi at 2:30am to take us to the house but he couldn't speak English and had no clue where the address was. It has been three years since I've been here and I don't know where to direct him. After a meeting of five other taxi drivers huddled around someone's GPS he had a general idea and off we went. Thankfully halfway there my memories returned and I could guide him the rest of the way to the house.

Exhausted and sick, the first few days were cold and rainy so we were all glad on day three when the sun came out.

While we are down south, Mark has decided to put a big push on boat work, and has packed up the dog and bird and moved on to SweetHaven to get uninterrupted work done. Unfortunately this is not comfortable living, there is no head on the boat, no running water, no stove to cook, no cushions, table or matresses and no heat other than a small space heater that needs to be pointed at the bird all the time. Poor Mark is roughing it for sure but sadly it is the only way any serious work will get done.

Mark sends me daily updates on what he's been up to, apparently today was a nice sunny day, he had the evening shift so had a few hours to putter around this morning before heading in. We have sprung a few leaks around the hatches again and somewhere up in the v berth water is getting in so he investigated those problems while drying out the bilges and installing some lights up in the v berth.

A few months ago we had our three giant solar panels installed. Two completely take up the top of the cockpit roof and the third is there hanging over the stern. But because it is so huge it hangs completely over the transom and actually drags in the water when we are underway. So this is not going to fly and our long term solution is to instal a davit off the stern and have the solar panel mounted on top of that, but since our budget is completely exhausted with all the other projects right now, we need a short term fix.

                                         

                                         

When we bought the boat there was this useless little swim ladder that we,ve been tripping over for months just sitting on deck, I don't know why we never tossed it, but we didn't. In the process of trying to McGuyver a solution to our hanging solar panel problem, Mark saw the ladder and decided it was the perfect thing to use to prop it up with. It is metal, has bases that screw into the deck, was the right size and ratchets so it can be moved to put the solar panel up or down.

                                       

However through this process, Mark working singlehanded and trying to finagle things hanging off the back of the boat he dropped the ladder to the bottom of the ocean.

Using the dignhy anchor has a grappling hook he managed to snag it and haul it back up and get it properly into place. 

The starboard ama window kept leaking, and we had a can of white flex seal on hand, you know the commercials where the guy sprays a screen door with this stuff and then uses it as the bottom of a boat, I guess we'll see if it is as good as they say.

The finished product, useless swim ladder repurposed and solar panel proped up out of the way. Necessity (and lack of funds) is the mother of invention.

After a hard day in the sun.

It's been a while.

It seems we are in a drought do boat work, before Christmas we had a good spurt of work we were getting done on SweetHaven until we got to the point of trying to acquire a chimney pipe for the wood stove which proved more complicated than we anticipated and everything else came to a stand still. Between work schedules, crumby, cold weather and holidays and family events in succession poor Sweets has been left to her own devices down at the marina, we check on her about once a week to make sure she's dry and the lines are secure. 

This makes me sad and nervous. Nobody buys a sailboat thinking it will be left to rot in a boat yard and sitting stagnant in the marina but that is what happens about 90% of the time. (I don't know about the actual statistics but to me it seems pretty high.) I can blame the weather and lack of time and funds and holidays all I want but when it comes down to it, those are the excuses everyone else falls back on to rationalize why they,ve spent thousands of dollars on a boat they never use. We say "someday" but I'm afraid someday will never come and it scares me to death. It has to come! We need to give ourselves a kick in the pants and get going on our boat rehab because we have pretty much put all our eggs in this one floating basket. In a year from now we will be posted out of Whidbey Island and we have no recourse and no where else to go, Sweets needs to be ready.

Thanks to my grandparents we have a plan. A weeks from today the kids and myself (and my mom) and flying down to Orlando, Florida to stay with my grandparents in their vacation home there for 2 months. Poor Mark has to stay behind and work but with this two months without the family around, he is packing up the dog and bird, closing up the house to save on utilities and is moving on to the boat. Being there everyday for two months he will have uninterrupted time to work and get the massive list of projects at least underway if not completed. I'm feeling hopeful, this next two months needs to be productive we want to take our first big trip on her this summer.

So what have we been up to the past two months?

We we blessed enough to have my grandparents spend more time visiting with us before they took off to Florida. Unfortunately in this time Mac dropped their iPad and cracked the screen. So Mark ordered a new screen and replaced it for the second time. With all the iPad in this family, we have broken and replaced five screens in two years. Apple charges $300 for them to do this, we buy a new screen off ebay for $30 and do it ourselves (thanks youtube) after the fifth time we are getting pretty good at it.

Surviving wet and cold weather, which means a wet and muddy dog.

Plugging away at school that we are desperately behind in.

(Looking at parameciums through the microscope.)

Playing in a cardboard boat.

More computer repairs.

Valentines days.

Olympics! We don't like to pay for cable, we don't like regular TV at all. We watch our shows and movies off of Netflix and Hulu but we did want to watch some olympics. We splurged and bought a digital antenna to pick up NBC. Of course living in huge sticks where we do, our indoor antenna needed to be rigged up outdoors. After days of trying, this was the sweet spot, on top of a ladder and painting pole. Of course every time we get wind or rain (which is every day) we need to go and readjust it. But hey, Go Canada!

Cuts and bruises, bounding on a trampoline with a metal dump truck is not the best idea. 

Our stay at home valentines date, the one day a year I actually cook a real meal.